Chapter 1

“Timothy? Timothy Alexander? Is that you! My how you’ve grown since I’ve last seen you! It’s me, your Auntie!”

My Aunt waved her arms and was quite happy to see me. There were only a few people at the train station, and she didn’t have to shout. The people boarding the train didn’t seem to mind her happy outburst.

I was by myself for the first time. At 15, I was quite ready to travel on the train alone. My parents had arranged for me to stay with my aunt on Summer Holiday from school. I had just finished year 10 of my school and I was looking forward to graduating.

I had boarded the train from Fulham Broadway Station in London to South Godstone. It was only an hour and twenty minutes, but it was like I was stepping into another world when I stepped off the station. Fulham is a middle-class suburb in London – nothing particularly notable about it.

However, South Godstone seemed like a sleepy village where time moved much slower, and people dressed in outdated fashions.

My Aunt Joanne was wearing a cheap green polyester dress that I could best describe as a house frock. It fit her tightly in all of the wrong places. The sheerness of the satin-finish of the flimsy material made it obvious that she was wearing a rather thick bra underneath. That manner of dress may have been popular in the 1980s or 1970s. It had probably been something my aunt wore to cocktail parties back then and that was why she still had it. Now only East Ender Chavs might wear one. It was suitable for wearing about the house, but I thought she might be embarrassed to wear it in public.

It seemed out of place for mid-morning in South Godstone, mostly because I would never expect my own mum to wear such a thing in public and the two women bore a close resemblance. Aunt Joanne had reddish brown hair, and was a bit more buxom, with a larger bottom but there was no mistaking how closely she looked like my mother.

I don’t want to give the impression that I was singling my aunt out or being judgmental. There was an older gentleman dressed in an outdated tweed suit with a broad tie that looked like something one would find in a hand-me down store. He crisply boarded the train when we arrived without so much as a look in my aunt’s direction.

I did think her attire odd, mostly because of the short hem of her skirt and the fact she was wearing black stockings. Women these days didn’t generally wear hose opting for the natural look.

My Aunt Joanne and my mum grew up in Northeast England and you can sometimes hear the accent when they speak. I won’t attempt to recreate the accent because I might over-exaggerate it to comical proportions and that’s not quite fair to my Auntie. I’m guilty of making northern people generally lower class than Southern (with the exception of Cockneys - those from the rougher end of London - who are again portrayed as somewhat ‘low rent’).

However, suffice to say that my accent is more in line with what you might expect from Hugh Grant and my aunt’s side of the family is a bit more rural. I don’t look anything like Hugh Grant, nor do I have his charm or wit. A friend described me once as a young Harry Potter without the good looks. I suppose that is due to my large spectacles and geeky nature. I’ve made an attempt to comb my straight brown hair a bit differently than Harry does now.

“Let me have a look at you,” my aunt grasped my arms and held them down as she examined me up and down with pride. Her eyes were wide with excitement. My parents tend to be more reserved, and I am as well. I was instantly blushing when she brushed my bangs out of my face with her fingers and told me I had such lovely eyes. “Too bad the glasses muck it up! My Sophie wears glasses! I hope you’ll get on with your cousins!”

I have three cousins and I’ve only met them on a few occasions. Sophie is the oldest and the last I saw her she was a shy beanpole with glasses. Charlie with his bright red hair is a bit of a character and his little brother Edward was his constant shadow.

I have no siblings and I wasn’t particularly excited about my trip, but I wanted to make the most of it. “Shall we be off?” I asked.

“Let’s catch up! How’s your mum getting on?” she asked. I was uncomfortable having this conversation at a train station. It was a small station with less than a half dozen people milling around either waiting to board or for another arrival. My Aunt’s rather boisterous voice seemed to draw attention and I would rather have these conversations back at her flat. I politely told her we were well and picked up my bags to politely signal we should be going.

“Oh no! I can’t have you carry your bags all the way back home. Charlie would have me hide for that,” she said. I thought it odd that her son might be the one who was offended by my aunt’s manners, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. She bent over at the waist and picked up both suitcases like a weightlifter trying to deadlift some weights.

The bags were heavy, and I had to use rollers to move them. She insisted on lifting them up and carrying them. “These bags must weigh 14 stones a piece!” she didn’t sound angry. My Aunt seemed impressed or possibly just amused that I would have this many clothes and want to bring them all with me.

“Have you packed to stay for the summer, or to move in?” she chuckled.

“I am sorry, Aunt Joanne,” I apologized. “I didn’t know what I might need, and I tried to pack for every contingency.”

“Contingency? Now that’s a funny word! Please call me Joy! Everybody does!” she insisted that I address her by her informal nickname. I’d heard my mom address Joy, but my father always called her Joanne.

“Aunt Joy,” the name sounded strangely inappropriate on my tongue. “My luggage has rollers. You don’t have to carry it. It will slide.”

“Nonsense,” Joy dismissed my suggestion and said that my luggage would get dusty if she dragged it down the street. I couldn’t argue that fact. I was just happy that she was willing to continue our conversation walking down the Station Road and not remain at the train station.

When she turned around, I immediately saw why my aunt had drawn so much attention. It wasn’t so much her obnoxiously loud voice or her wildly waving arms, though these mannerisms certainly contributed to the strange looks she was receiving.

She hadn’t noticed that the back of her short dress had accidentally been pulled up in the back. Most of her bottom was visible, and I could see the red garters she wore that held up her black stockings. She thankfully had on black knickers, but they disappeared inside of her sizable butt crack like a thong.

I was alarmed and embarrassed for her when I noticed. I knew she would be mortified, and I thought of the most tactful way I could tell her that her bottom was revealed in the obscenest way. There might be 6,000 people total in all of Godstone and quite a bit less in her part of the village. There was a high probability that most of the people that saw her knew her and that made it seem even more scandalous to me.

No one thought to warn her, but I thought that was simply because the British are far more polite and less direct than Americans. I felt obligated as family to tactfully warn her that that she was exposed.

“Um, Aunt Joy?” I asked as I followed her down the Station Road toward Lagham. I tried not to look directly at her bottom. She was my aunt after all. However, I’d not had many (any) opportunities to see a bare woman’s bottom in my life outside of watching porn on my cell phone and I couldn’t help but look. I felt guilty that I took a long glance, as I knew she would be instantly humiliated once I told her.

“You can call me Joy if you prefer, Timothy. We’re going to be living together for a couple months so we might as well get acquainted.”

That was an understatement. I was acquainted now with the full image of my aunt’s very round bottom.

“Aunt Joy, I have something to tell you, please don’t be alarmed,” I said. She stopped walking and looked over her shoulder. “It’s me dress, isn’t it?”

“Yes, uh, the wind must have caught it,” I averted my eyes.

“The wind, eh? More like Charlie’s doing than Mother nature. C’mon then, we’ve got a short walk and these bags are heavy.”

She turned and began to walk without dropping her skirt back down.

“You don’t understand Aunt Joy, it’s indecent,” I said.

“Aye, that’s what I’ve been saying,” My Aunt seemed amused instead of horrified when she agreed with me. “One of these days the constable will lock me up for indecent exposure. I suppose you’ll find out soon enough but thank you for being kind enough to let me know.”

I was perplexed and a bit terrified. Had I walked into some episode of the Twilight Zone? My aunt continued walking and she seemed to accentuate her hips more as she did. The emphasized movement may have had more to do with needing to shift her weight than to prevent dropping my bags.I r

“Does Emma walk around your flat naked sometimes?” My Aunt’s inquiry only confused me more. I told her that my mother would never do that.

“Our flat is a small walk-up, and I am on the government dole because my ex-husband’s support doesn’t go far enough, so we don’t have a lot of privacy. I’ve never been a shy one, not really. I walk about in my brassiere and knickers at home quite a bit. I doubt I have any bits a strapping lad like yourself hasn’t already seen, and I am sure you’ve seen more flesh on Brighton Beach than you are seeing right now.”

“We aren’t at the beach, Aunt Joy,” I respectfully reminded her that we were in a rural village – her home village – and that anyone might see us, even her neighbors. I presumed she didn’t want to be seen as the town strumpet. I could only imagine that It be difficult to live down such a reputation in a place with so few people once rumors began to circulate. My aunt and I had already reached a small restaurant and pub called the South Godstone Inn which had tables outside occupied with many people eating dinner!

I felt like I was watching a train slowly moving to crash into another train as my aunt blissfully ignored my warnings. She didn’t just ignore them. She laughed them off as if it wasn’t any big deal. I thought perhaps she thought no one could notice and my politely warning her would draw more attention than it would if she shifted her dress back down.

There was no mistaking my Aunt Joanne’s skirts were pulled up in the back. I was quite surprised that my aunt had ignored every warning.

I might have pulled the skirt down myself to save herself some embarrassment, if I didn’t feel it was inappropriate to reach for her bottom.

“I can’t remember when it started,” she explained “When Charlie was a boy, he used to dare me to do silly things. You probably dare Emma to do them too? I would something silly to amuse him like shake my boobs or stick my finger in his mouth and let him bite it and he would laugh and laugh.”

I would have never dared ask my mother to do anything like that. I couldn’t even imagine the context in which that conversation would happen. Aunt Joy made it sound so casual and mundane, that it was fairly typical behavior for a family.

“When Charlie was old enough to be interested in girls, he started to dare me to do randy things,” She smiled. I had to walk quickly to keep up. I found myself slowing down to trail her if only to distance myself before we passed the Inn. I had to walk faster to keep up and be able to hear her or I knew she’d only raise her voice and the people eating dinner would be able to hear her story. I wasn’t sure where this was going.

“The dares evolved after my husband and I separated to the point where I don’t go a day without at least one or two,” she smiled brightly like she enjoyed them. “Charlie dared me to carry your luggage bag to the flat and not let it touch the ground. I had no idea quite how high he lifted my skirt, but I knew my bum would be visible. I suppose you can see everything, can you, Timothy?”

Her tone of voice was surprising. I didn’t expect her to sound so excited to find out just how exposed she was.

“Yes, I can see just everything,” I informed her quite seriously.

“Not my nipper?” she asked. That was coarse language for an asshole, and I knew what it meant. I couldn’t see inside the ravine of my aunt’s ass cheeks, and I blushed that she even considered it a possibility. When I didn’t respond right away, she assumed I didn’t understand the term. “My ring hole -it’s not visible, is it?”

At least my extroverted aunt refreshingly seemed concerned that the most intimate part of her fundament remained hidden to protect her dignity. I told her that I knew what a Nipper was and that it was covered.

Charlie said I WAS a Nipper. His mother laughed it off and told me not to take anything Charlie said all that seriously. “He’s just having a laugh, Timothy. That’s how he shows you he likes you.”

“Yeah, you are a proper bastard, and you are family. It’s just how we talk around here. Don’t get your nickers all wadded up,” Charlie smirked. I wasn’t a bastard at all. I wasn’t really sure if Charlie meant what he said or he was pretending to approve of me for his mother’s sake.

“I am sure you’ve seen many a cute Nipper, much younger and tighter than mine, I didn’t mean to offend Timothy,” she replied politely. “You are a good lad,” she walked proudly past the waitress and customers of the Inn having dinner.

I saw a woman sitting with her husband giggle and they both followed her with their eyes as she walked to the corner and turned right down Lagham. “Not far now,” she informed me that we just had to walk to the end of Lagham. It wasn’t a short distance and there were rows of brick home flats we would have to pass.

My aunt returned to asking me mundane questions about my father and my schooling as if she wasn’t nearly bare-assed and exposed in her neighborhood. There only a few people outside on this warm summer day in Surrey. Boys my age riding bikes and laughing, older men mowing their lawns with push mowers, ladies unloading their shopping. We had passed at least 17 people but not one of them screamed or acted more than a little amused by my aunt’s antics.

“Aren’t you concerned with what your neighbors might say about you?”

“Rumors and gossip?” she smiled dismissively. “Of course, I am, but by now most people in South Godstone think I am batty. I suppose if I suddenly stopped doing dares, they might have even more speculation on the reasons for even that. Everyone has an opinion. Horses of another colour, and all of that.”

“Do they know your son gives you dares?”

“I suppose some do. His friends, certainly. Not many ask,” Joy acted like it was truly not that unusual. I did see a few smirks and sidelong glasses. I believed the spectacle of a woman carrying two heavy suitcases in a short skirt while I walked behind holding nothing might have been enough to draw unwanted attention even without her skirt lifted up in the back.

I was truly puzzled and asked if anyone gets offended. I wasn’t sure the extent of her dares but walking down the street with one’s skirt pulled up in Fulham would be scandalous.

“Oh, aye,” she said. “If I get a smile or a laugh though from one, then it makes up for a tongue lashing from someone uptight and repressed,” my aunt didn’t sound like she cared too much what her neighbors might think of her. However, I suspected that she didn’t want to admit that it might bother her and was trying to put on a brave face.